Even black cats need a reason why

In my case, I didn’t get a promo out despite a monthly reminder on my calendar. Yes, every month a week or so before the 13th, a recurring reminder prompts me to check if there’s a Friday the 13th that month. This month, there actually WAS a Friday the 13th, which is a great time for a promo tied to the “holiday”.

I do this and recommend it for my clients for Friday the 13th and other oddball “holidays” because they’re a reason why, even if it is a quirky one. You can always craft a unique story between a product or service and almost any normal or oddball/unusual holiday. For that matter, you can make up a holiday that’s all yours. It isn’t like you’d be the first to do that.

A reason why

Before we do that, let’s go back to the business reason for doing this in the first place: A reason why.

There are all kind of reasons to do a promotion, but they are more productive if there’s a reason behind them – even if the reason is downright silly.

A few years ago, a Baltimore business had an 11% off sale after a snowstorm dumped 11 inches of snow in the area. The online business hadn’t slowed since snow didn’t disrupt their nationwide retail traffic, but the 11 inch snow was worth celebrating so they had a little sale to commemorate it.

Please understand that when I say “promotion”, I am usually NOT talking about “a sale”.

In particular, I’m absolutely not talking about the 40-50-60% sales that stores seem convinced are a daily requirement to keep a mall store open, or at least to generate the traffic they think they need.

I don’t spend much time in malls, but a recent visit had more stores with BOGO and 40-50-60-70 (yes, 70!) percent off sales than I’ve ever seen.

Either their original prices are fantasy or they are in serious trouble.

What exactly is a promotion?

Since I’ve made it clear what a promotion isn’t, I should also make it clear what a promotion IS.

A promotion draws attention, giving your clients and prospects a reason why. While it might include some sort of discount, it doesn’t have to. A well-executed promotion certainly doesn’t need discounts to make it successful.

Promotions commonly attract a specific type of client and prospect to your business. The newbie, the expert, the confused, the investigator, as well as those categories of prospects and clients within each product/service niche you offer.

Fine tune your reason why

A local home brewing store can have a promotion to introduce brewing to their clientele, yet still narrow the audience and get a specific kind of buyer. Instead of having a Saturday in-store brewing day promotion / event, they might have one focused specifically on India Pale Ales (IPA) and then rotate through other styles. In a large market area, they may want to narrow IPA days down to double-hopped or dry-hopped IPAs.

When doing this and focusing on one brewing style, they might stock up on fresh IPA-ready hops and have several brews in different stages of brewing so they can teach each stage’s hopping techniques.

Doing this with a dozen different styles of brewing on the same Saturday would be out of reach for most home brew stores – and would likely hurt business by confusing those who are paying attention.

Worse yet, if prospective home brewers (ie: newbies) show up at the promotion and happen to be folks who don’t like IPAs or the hop’s influence on that style’s taste, they might never come back.

Attract, Educate, Train, Sell

Whether you sell home brewing gear and supplies, or power tools for artisan woodworkers (hmm, do those mix well?), you’re likely to want to separate promotions by audience type so that you don’t attract newbies who need broad knowledge to make a decision with experts focused on tightly defined niches.

The point of the promotions described above is to attract, educate, train and of course, sell. No matter what you do, you’re likely to have prospects and clients interested in what you do that fall into groups you could arrange into newbies, confused, investigators and experts.